Internet marketing experiment update!

After reading about your success with this, and following your comments about it on Twitter, I decided to offer “do follow” links on my blog as well. I’m just starting to try and build traffic to my blog, so we’ll see what happens.

BTW, my Twitter username is avfguy - so follow me! (twitter.com/avfguy)

Google likes to slam things that are legal and they do not like. the Google not like part that drives me crazy. It is a dictatorship with them, for no reason they will cut your PR, I know last October they cut millions of PR rankings because of link selling, like they throw a fit and I will get them by reducing their PR.

@smartmarketing

Jim,
This has been an interesting experiment! I am pleased to see that your spam rate has not gone up, as I know that was a concern. As for Google, who cares. You are building such a great following and fostering so much confidence in the power of conversation. That is “True” networking at its finest. Great job! Please keep us updated on future developments.
Cheers!
Virginia @Cars4Causes

Linking as an SEO tactic will be less valuable as Google continues to innovate in the Personalized Search area. Once get into Behavior and Intent based search, page rankings will be based more on your web history than linking.

Hi there an interesting article, I don’treally take my blog that seriously at the moment,

I’m just using it as an online diary also use it to post things I have picked up from the emailsI receive and re-blog them If I feel that people find them interesting.

I also use it to post my observations when I’m out and about, I love observing people, sit me on a park bench and I’d happily observe people all day long, as long as the sun is out

Twitter username:@wizard1974uk

Very interesting results, I too would have imagined that more people would comment for link building purposes. Please keep us informed of the results as time goes on, I would be very interest to know if Google starts visiting your site on the regular basis as it did in the past. Well done on the bold move Jim.

Like anything else, any kind of ‘interaction’ a person can get, the happier they may be…even if this person considers himself/herself a recluse. It’s part of the human experience, isn’t it…?

With this thinking in mind, I have personally found that the more I share, the more I am likely to get some kind of worthwhile feedback. To me, this kind of ‘experiential marketing’ is very much like the idea of ‘paying it forward’ - the more you give equals the more you get.

Kind of like practicing some good karma online.

With your experiment, I believe you are not only paying it forward, but introducing the idea of actively creating interactions online…which, to me, equals to some pretty decent karma online.

This is great information for bloggers. I am trying this out now. Hope my results are closely the same.

@iKyleR is my twitter username!

Interesting! I didn’t know any of that. I haven’t had much luck with StumbleUpon, any tips for using that?

I found this through Twitter myself: http://twitter.com/wooleyduck

Google traffic here had been increasing until I started offering do-follow links. Now, it has stopped increasing and has actually dropped slightly.

This is strange, my Google traffic account to about 46+% of all visitors and I never seen drop in numbers due to DoFollow implementation. And I’ve been doing it for well over year.

Very interesting test Jim. Looking forward to hearing about your results over the next few weeks. t/ @RoyMorejon

Hi Jim,
Love the article, will be adding do follow to my blog.

I’m still new at this and you’ve been helpful to me in twitter as well.

@debworks is my twitter name!

thanks,
Deb

Glad I read this, I had no idea what the whole do-follow thing was about. I think I’ll turn that on for mine as well.

Jim, I completely agree with you. My company has been building commercial blogsites for years. We use do-follow links 99.9% of the time.

Google (and other) engines are in the business of finding (and recommending) quality content on a given subject matter and they change their heuristics all the time (more than once per day, on average.) Anyone that believes they know a magic trick (like follow vs. no follow) for influencing Google is mistaken.

Our philosophy has always been: create quality, on-message content and let the search engines do their job. The search engines will continue to adapt and get better at what they do.

Any attempt to develop content *for* search engines is misguided because the search engines change so quickly. But what does not (and will not) change is that search engines are looking for quality, on-message content.

@faseidl

Yeah, google is pretty much a necessary evil. I don’t like that they’re in my email scanning it for keywords, but I deal w/ it b/c I like gmail. And I don’t like that they track my search history, but google is convenient. They’re going to rule the world soon, i just know it. It’s really scary how much power they have over us, they have us in the palm of their hands pretty much. Anyway, I found you via twitter and I plan on checking out all of your resources. Thank you for this great service!
Andrea/ @MakingMusicMag

I would love to initiate a linkback to the people who comment on my blog. It’s not many but they are all interesting and I would love to help them out! My Twitter name is @BlackPearlCreat. Now I just have to figure out how to do it…

Thanks, I’ll have a look around for the SU info.

I am definitely interested in seeing how this works out for you in the long run. I would like to implement but still a little hesistant. Thanks for being the brave one here! @jonmikelbailey

Hi Jim,

I’ve been following your Blog since you started the DoFollow and thanks for posting the update today. It proves building any kind of business is about relationships, which is the key success and you have proven this. It’s prompted me to review, update and renew my blog, Thanks Jim!

@seandb1

do follow links will be added to Adjoke shortly. Thanks for the tip.

@pcrowe

One of your readers, Kevin Webb, was kind enough to give me instructions on how to follow suit, Jim. (I didn’t realize until your post and Kevin emailed me that I had a “no follow” system set up in my blog.)

I was interested in hearing your results before I followed your lead, so THANK YOU for sharing this with us!

You rock!!

Jeannette

What you’ve done here really IS amazing, and very impressive! It’s nice to know that you CAN piss off the mighty Google and NOT have to worry about disappearing off the internet….

Thanks for doing this, and thanks for keeping us posted on the results! : )

@carolehayes

Great post and while listening last evening to the pre-launch pitch for a software package named “Traffic Crusher” I heard the creator say basically the same things about Google that you’re discovering. Yes, SEO can get you traffic… and then, there are a LOT more ways that work REALLY well. What YOU are doing proves that emphatically! Keep up the great work and please continue sharing!

David Perkins (aka: trafficmechanic)

follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/trafficmechanic

Great post and great site Jim. I’m new to marketing via the web and am definitely dependent on Google at the moment for marketing wedding photography. Just discovered Twitter and am also looking at it’s potential for marketing Indian weddings. Early days. Follow me on
http://www.twitter.com/ralphphotograph

a-HA! I wrote a blog post about dofollow about a week or so ago based upon an article I read by a Tweep of mine. I’m wondering if you have another article on the subject. In any case, very good advice thank you. I already have you on my Twitter, which is how I found this great article. (@womanintraining) Thanks!
I’m going to edit my dofollow post to include a link to this post.

I’m about 6 months into this Twitter and Social Media thing and I find two types of users… people who are using it as a tool to vent and people who use it to communicate with clients/customers/friends in a way that is always available (until Twitter went down yesterday!)
I started a research on the use of social media to drive your at home business, by using free tools available online, and if used properly, will help drive revenue for you. I became a home-business owner, in Tastefully Simple, to try this philosophy out to see if it works.
Wish me luck!
@brandyfavilla
@tastefullysimpl

I am new to this and a bit overwhelmed at times. I had read earlier that the links were a no no. How do you set up a do follow? Is there an automatic response through twitter? or is it something you do manually with each individual who follows you?
Thanks for all your help.
Newbie twitter Lea
http://www.twitter.com/mindmatrix

Thanks for the update, Jim. I was thrilled to pay forward a kindness the other day. You’re paying it forward with dofollow. The real world is not the matrix that tries to engulf us…there’s a better world right behind the matrix.

I welcome new twitterers at http://www.twitter.com/CoachEva1

Interesting experiment, Jim! Do you think the long-term effects of this could harm the growth of your blog? I’m looking forward to reading about the future results of this!

If more people did this Jim maybe Google would be forced to rethink.

It’s just a thought…

Best,

Nicola

Good point but they’re not stupid. If they see a trend there’s a good chance they will respond.

Nicola

Very interesting post. I will continue to follow this I’m curious as to what the results will be.

http://twitter.com/the_gman

Hi Jim~ methinks u underestimate how savy most of us bloggers and blog readers are with regards to plugins and the value of promotion.

Once it “clicks” that commenting on another’s site can lead to their readership visiting your site (as well as other benefits) I think u will find the numbers steadily increasing.

There are so many internet nd small business marketers out there on the web. It took me a week of scoping yours and others sites to decide that your blog is of more value to me to visit regularly.

others will follow~its all part of that attraction factor (which may have something to do with your John Travolta likeness

Can you offer “do-follow” links on Blogger?
Jim, on Twitter you mentioned that the majority of your traffic comes from sources other than Google. So, how much did the drop in Google traffic affect your blog?
You can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/midnighttango

Jim, Care to share with us (perhaps in another post) what steps you’ve taken to market your blog successfully (already know about Twitter, of course)?

Thanks,
@avfguy

Jim …

I’m just glad to follow someone with 22 years of experience in marketing (since I have the same in sales manager development), and I’m learning a bunch just from reading your articles. Thanks for thinking of others and not GOOGLE with what you are doing.

Regards,
Lance @salesmanageslns

Jim, just subscribed to your newsletter. Look forward to reading more articles on your blog and learning from a pro.
Thanks
Lea @mindmatrix

Jim~ I was not referring to Google, but to your surprise that comment numbers haven’t increased.

I am very pleased to hear your experiment is working. And, even more pleased to see that your method was totally transparent and upfront.

Thanks again for another incisive post. I have been grappling with whether to deactivate no-follow on my blog for a little while. I always found it strange that new bloggers aren’t more encouraged to deactivate early on given that they haven’t built much credibility with Google at that stage anyway. It becomes a bit more tricky for more established blogs. I admire your approach to this issue.

Always welcoming new followers http://twitter.com/publicpsend

Apologies for a second comment but I foolishly misspelt my twitter account - http://twitter.com/publicspend

Hi Jim,

I’ve been using do-follow on my blog since I started blogging for the very reason you mention above - the Internet is about people and not Google. Also, this posts fits well with your previous post about people not hits.

I’d rather have less traffic but some quality readers who want to consume my information than a load of traffic taking up my bandwidth who don’t want to be on my site.

I think that was an excellent idea to write a post outlining the fact that you allow do-follow on your blog.

Good on ya!

Trish

fascinating follow-up.

That is truly amazing. Google still accounts for the majority of my visitors. As a real estate agent though I think many people are searching through gooogle (or other search engines) to find real estate.

@floridafuture

Although Google runs most of the internet out there and continues to expand, Google isn’t that only option to dominate on the internet. I do have to agree that quality people make the difference and not traffic. If you are well known from “word of mouth”, in my opinion, that is using the internet!

@iKyleR

Jim, this is an absolutely GENIUS idea! It’s not about site rankings, it’s about people, and your idea clearly illustrates it! Great job and thanks for sharing so many wonderful ideas!!!

Interesting post! I’m from Twitter:
@gailkonopbaker

Interesting experiment! I’d never even heard of ‘do-follow’ before, so we’ll see what, if anything, it does. I’m a fairly fresh blogger and am more excited about writing and reading others’ blogs than SEO - this certainly can’t hurt anything!

Oh, and I’m @kate__k on Twitter

Thank you for pointing out what the “follow” vs. “do not follow” is really all about.
I’ve only been doing this for about six months, and I’m learning everyday that I have a lot left to learn.
My specialty is the Environment, but I’m learning more about blogging than I ever knew possible. Thanks for the great article.

@TwilightEarth on Twitter

Very cool experiment.Link are huge for website and if you can find no-follows, increased awareness will result.

@andrewosterberg on twitter

I just StumbledUpon this article with a thumbs up. Seems like a good idea to me!

Isn’t sharing ideas and what we find of interest a big part of social media?

Google will adjust, they are smart and fast folks.

Hi Jim,
I hope that I’ll be able to follow suit. I am going to look at your previous posts to find out how to fix the no-follow in my blog. I’m so glad that this is working out for you and hope that I will also have similar luck, but I have only just begun and won’t have any results for a while.
On Twitter, I am aptly lisanardionline. Talk to you soon.
Lisa

Hello Jim,

Thank you for following me on Twitter at @idaconcpts. Your blog writing style is very down-to-earth and down-to-business. Congrats on making points in a simple, concise manner.

Regarding your marketing experiment. My experience at my web analytics blog is:

1. Stumbleupon
In just one day, I received more than 400 hits, which is a lot for my humble blog with a total of 3000+ readers to date.

2. Search Engine Optimization
Having a blogroll of relevant blogs of marketing and web analytics; linking keywords to relevant websites; tagging and creating keywords, are just a couple of the ways that I am able to make Google like me.

3. Referrals from friend blogs.

4. Links from social networking sites such as Twitter, Linkedin, Techhui (local Hawaii IT association).

Please keep us posted on your experiment.

Jim, I follow your blog daily and follow you on Twitter. Just really getting into all this and feel like I found the leader right away. Thanks.

Links are very important, and I really appreciate that you have chosen ‘do follow’.

Some links are better than others. Links from high page rank sites are more ‘valuable’.

I use seo and articles and forum comments to drive traffic to my websites and blogs, recently I’ve added Twitter to my arsenal.

Daily effort to create links to your site really does pay off.

Glad I found you.

http://www.twitter.com/lynnelee

@lynnelee

Hi Jim,

Interesting post and experiment, what I am not sure is exactly why you would want to have do-follow links when it there is the possibility of them harming your site, should it link to any site that Google or indeed some of the other search engines do not approve of? I guess the fact that you are getting more people linking back to your blog could more than compensate for this and if you manually weed out the bad eggs it could really pay off…

Think I have talked myself into the answer here!

This is a great post since there is lots of debate to ‘nofollow’ or not.

It raised a good question that I hadn’t pondered yet and that is if backtrack and linkbacks count in the do-follow process?

I suppose if the blog is entirely do-follow than that is an extra incentive to get others to link back to your site.

Twitter/Stumble: jpearce01

I was never receiving all that much traffic from Google to begin with, or any traffic at all, so I went on my campaign of first commenting on other people’s blogs that I had an interest in, then adding CommentLuv for dofollow links. Since then, I’ve had a drastic increase in followers and commenters, and my Google traffic has remained the same. This works for me.

You definitely have lowered your executional risk by going with a strategy that isn’t dependent on the largesse of search engines.

I’m curious about your change in Google traffic. Are you measuring that in absolute numbers or as a percentage of total traffic sources? Just wondering if do-follow is increasing traffic from other sources, so Google as a percentage is down.

Even if the absolute numbers are down, that’s not entirely surprising. Commenting for link juice strikes me as one of those practices that Google would like to stamp out, even though they’ll take many good, legitimate comments with them.

Thanks Jim - very helpful guidance. Now if I only have hours to keep exploring your site today. I’ll read bit by bit or blog by blog.
Thank you! Cindy

http://www.twitter.com/Method3AM http://www.twitter.com/CindyColoma

“The Internet is actually about PEOPLE and not about Google or any other company!” that exactly what it should be. Good article!

I’ve been reading a lot about this lately and it seems it’s been working well for lots of bloggers. Well done.

I am wondering if perhaps I am getting BETTER traffic. Maybe people that follow links like yours are more prone to pay their authors (bloggers) with ad investigation and remarks and checking out the sites more, digging or saving links????

Just a thought that occurs. I know I get some google traffic but I am not sure how many actually stay around long enough to comment on articles. Tracking is out of my control on ehow.

I would like to experimient sometime after I reach my next moentary plateau. ALRADY

Have you looked at the new incoming links and the anchor text they use? I know there are sites that list blogs with DoFollow policies but that probably wouldn’t account for all of them.

It would be interesting to know what the increased links are targeting on your blog.

I HUG my Twitter! I heard that Twitter is going to take over Google…..now, where did I hear that from? Regardless, although I am not blacklisted, I pissed off the Almighty Google too - by not updating removed blog links in my robots.txt >,<